The game of school is very real, at least in my own experiences. I can remember as early as second grade when we were forced to write and rewrite vocabulary words on lined paper, I would write the first letter of the word down the page ten times, then the next, then the next letter. I felt it easier to write the same letter over and over instead of the same word, even if it took the same amount of time. When poor Mrs. Johnson found out multiple students were doing this, she lost her marbles. When vocab time came, she would walk around the class, eyes like an eagle's, trying to spot any cheating. Of course it didn't stop there. Throughout high school, I would look for shortcuts whether it be copying answers or just doing the bare minimum as the students in the after-school class did. What always confused me is that teachers would teach us shortcuts to learning and then get mad when we invented our own. Rhymes were given to remember the multiplication tables, but if you look up summaries to books instead of reading them then you are cheating the system. Retrospectively I understand the differences between these two but it wasn't until very recently that I understood the importance of these differences.